I didn't think it was possible for a sport that's only 15 years old to have a "good ol' days" syndrome. You know, like when a bunch of friends get together and talk about how great everything used to be? Think former Big Tobacco execs or Notre Dame football fans.
Well, after 15 years of racing, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series has developed a good ol' days problem. It seems that fans and media alike are living in the past, prefering to celebrate the fledgling days of the NCWTS -- when weekly beatings and bangings of the then-called Super Trucks and classic battles between Mike Skinner and Ron Hornaday were the norm -- than the current schedule. On Saturday at Martinsville I watched colleagues and fans pack up and leave the track as the trucks rolled onto the grid.
But here's the thing. The good ol' days of the Truck Series are actually happening right now, and the product has never been more entertaining. Skinner and Hornaday are still beating and banging, and the races are as dramatic as ever. In a decade and a half of going to the track I haven't seen a more emotional pit-box celebration than when local hero Timothy Peters pulled off the upset win at Martinsville.
Yep, the good ol' days of Trucks are here. It's just that somewhere along the way everyone stopped paying attention.
"This is about the most fun I have," admits Kevin Harvick, who broke into NASCAR's big leagues by grabbing Richard Childress' attention (and a full-time ride) in 1997 with the way he handled his 3,400-pound pick 'em truck. He now makes a point to run at least three NCWTS events each season as a teammate to Hornaday, whom he also employees. "This is business for me as an owner, but as a driver it's an escape. Cup can feel like work. This is fun. Nobody's complaining about aeropush or bitching about being too busy. People here talk about racing."
Trucks have always been fun. When the series ran its first full-time schedule in 1995, the garage was filled with teams owned by super-moguls like Dale Earnhardt, Rick Hendrick and Childress. They raced alongside mom-and-pop teams run by West Coast short-track legends. Guys such as Hornaday and Skinner, who would've never gotten a shot at the big time if not for the new Cup feeder division, became household names to NASCAR fans.
Youngsters such as Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards suddenly had the chance to mix it up with the likes of Ken Schrader and Geoff Bodine. Terry Labonte and Mark Martin traded paint with longtime regional legends such as Walker Evans and Bob Keselowski (better known these days as Brad's dad).
"We'd race anywhere and everywhere," Skinner recalled before making his 200th career start on Saturday. "And we came in like conquering heroes to places that had always wanted big-time NASCAR racing but never thought they'd get it."
Places like the Louisville Motor Speedway, which was shaped like a .438-mile satellite dish, and the Portland Speedway, an old fairgrounds track with a manhole cover sitting in the middle of Turn 4. No matter where they went, they drew big crowds.
Then the series' stars started graduating to Cup cars, the big-name owners such as Hendrick and Earnhardt stopped fielding teams and the series started moving away from its short track, stand-alone roots and adding more superspeedway events as Cup and Indy Racing League undercards.
"Somewhere in there we may have lost our identity a little bit," confesses 2002 champ Mike Bliss. "Were we a place for old guys to go race, or for young guys coming up, or both? The racing was, and still is, second to none as far as competitiveness up front. But sometimes that isn't enough, you know?"
In the middle part of this decade, NASCAR marketing brass admittedly ignored the Trucks and Busch (now Nationwide) series when cutting licensing and promotional deals with sponsors and broadcast partners, choosing to push only the top handful of stars competing in the Sprint Cup. By the time they doubled back to correct that mistake, the nation's economic woes had hit. And the first teams to be affected by the sudden drought of sponsorship dollars and ticket buyers certainly weren't in the Cup Series. They were two steps lower.
"It is a hard sell," team owner Jack Roush said last week while explaining his decision not to field a NCWTS team in 2010, the first time since its inception. "We have been very successful grooming talent in the Truck Series: Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, Colin Braun currently. I could go on and on with the drivers who started with us in Trucks. But it is a tough time now for everyone. And Dodge and Toyota used that series to enter NASCAR and some of their sponsorship practices undermined the foundation that we worked so hard to build. That, paired with the nation's current economic situation, created a sort of perfect storm for that series."
The collateral damage from that storm was evident at the back of the grid in Saturday's Martinsville event. Sheet-metal real estate where sponsors such as DuPont and NAPA once lived is now occupied by a tongue-twisting list of one-off sponsors such as O.C.R. Gaz Bar and Fly Energy Shots. It was also apparent in the press box, where I sat with only a half-dozen other writers. As newspapers and Web sites have had to cut back across the board, they've also cut back on their Truck coverage -- ESPN.com included. The situation has become so bad that earlier this year defending series champion Johnny Benson found himself without a ride due to sponsorship woes.
But for all the talk about money woes and concerns about the series' future, the racing is still just as door-bangingly delicious as it was back in '95. In fact, it's better. Start-and-parks in the rear haven't affected the fights up front. In 1998, the height of the Ron Hornaday vs. Jack Sprague heyday, the Trucks averaged eight lead changes per race. This year they're averaging 8.1, and there have been nine different winners, including three first-time victors. And that's happened in spite of Hornaday's historic five-race win streak this summer.
"We have some incredibly loyal fans out there," the three-time champ says. "They have stuck with us through thick and now through thin. But you want to shake some of these people who only watch Sprint Cup races on Sunday and say, 'Hey, you don't know what you're missing.'"
What they're missing are the real good ol' days of the Truck Series.
Ryan McGee
